Where Have All the Groupies Gone?

Tips for Old-Fashioned Star Fucking

It's not very often in this post-feminist haze of the 21st century that you find someone who voluntarily identifies as a groupie. Gone are their glory days, a time that not just coincidently coincided with the glory days of Southern rockers--the two went together like peas and carrots.

But now that women have carved out a respectable niche in the rockstar arena, it's considered an insult--if not a degradation of womankind as a whole--to throw one's self at a musician as human offering. But let's just say for the sake of classic rock that there's something to the Camille Paglia-esque slut empowerment notion, okay? Okay! Let's go "do it" with rock stars. Here's how:

• Be hot. Sorry, there's just no getting around this one. Rock stars have their pick of any number of groupies on any given night. The competition is fierce, and you better have a damn intriguing personality if your behind is sagging and your face is a mess. And just so you know, Southern rockers demand big hair, "Daisy Dukes," and terry cloth tube tops.

• Get backstage. One of the easiest, if most coldly deceptive ways of getting yourself backstage is to arrive at the venue early and talk up the opening act. Pretend like you've heard about them, flirt with them, lead them on. Whatever it takes to get backstage to win the real prize--the headliners! (Another method is to pretend you're a journalist. It works every time.)

• Swallow (your pride, among other things). Stop thinking about misogyny and the ratio of men to women in any given issue of Rolling Stone. This isn't about thinking: It's about sex and celebrity worship! Next time someone tries to tell you you're degrading yourself, just think how degrading it is for you to objectify a musician. Right? If it weren't for the Godlike guitar playing or 50-foot tour bus, you wouldn't be giving him the time of day.

• Learn to sew. Elton John wasn't kidding when he penned the lyrics for "Tiny Dancer"--the protagonist, you may recall, was "seamstress for the band." If you happen to get invited on tour, this skill will most definite ly come in handy.

• Have condoms. I don't care who he is or what instrument he's a virtuoso on, your chances of getting the clap are high. (Unless you're ovulating, then you should totally try to get pregnant; that would be so cool!)

• Have drugs. Like all competitions, it never hurts to have a little something-something to give you an edge on the competition vying for your band(member)'s attention. But do your homework: Make sure you are at least reasonably certain that the object of your pursuit really does do the drug before you bring it. And be thorough, because you don't want to bring heroin just because he wrote a song about heroin and then find out he wrote it about his sister dying of an overdose.

• Go for golden. Do the old guys! Whitesnake, .38 Special, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Black Crowes are all touring this summer, and either come from or pay tribute to the grand old era of groupie-dom. They're more likely to speak your language. If you tried this on some 24-year-old anti-folkie you'd likely reduce him to tears, confusion, or, worse, lecturing.

• Tell everyone. There's absolutely no point to this if you aren't going to dish the dirt on his anatomy, performance, quirks, utterances, underwear, etc. Leak all info and, if possible, photos to any and all town gossips, publications, and TV news networks you can get hold of. You are now irrelevant to someone relevant, and you deserve credit for it all.